"InTheMixRadio" has a nice sound.That is until the kids in the studio decide to chime in.Fairly odd mix between what I believe to be french, english and dutch? tunes.Very few songs are out on typical top 40 lists, played everywhere, etc.

As you surmise receivers, pre/pro's, TV's, Blu-Ray players and media centers now all come with streaming clients. I find these proprietary clients lack the features and robustness of the open source alternatives.

All you need is a server that streams audio (or video). There are many such options from open source media server software like XBMC to proprietary solutions from Apple.

The benefit of the client/server approach is you probably have a computer that can act as a server. For example a windows box can run something like Tversity (tversity.com) or if you have XBMC running it can mount smb network shares or other file services and stream the contents to clients.

My current solution is a dedicated XBMC media center in the living room that connects to the media file server over a gigabit wired network and acts as a streaming server to devices and as an airplay service for devices. Any device that supports the protocol can connect to xbmc and thus access all the centralized media files. This was all done using off the shelf standard components.

Those of you following my saga know that I recently got a projector (yay!) which precludes replacing my receiver "soon" (boo!).

But I'm still not satisfied with my music consumption experience. Murph has been kind to counsel me via PM (warmest thanks, Andy), but I want to spread the frustration a bit more broadly.

You guys should know that technology has now basically passed me by. I'm not a network engineer, I'm not a programmer, and I need pretty step-by-step instructions to do much of anything. I like to learn and willing to spend time, but don't start with "sudo get". Or maybe DO.

My existing Squeezebox *almost* works. It satisfies these requirements:-Controllable from a mobile device (Android phone and/or iPad)-Accesses and plays FLAC and MP3 files-Outputs digital and analog signals-Easy to use

What it doesn't do is actually WORK consistently. I'm having a lot of trouble getting my Squeezebox and Pandora user ID's to work consistently, and either the Squeezebox or the server don't appear on the network consistently, so I'm perpetually waiting, restarting, waiting, etc. before actually hearing any songs. I'm about ready to break something.

I've tried - with mixed success - to use Apple TV. It's a good interface and a good device that is already integrated with everything else. The problem is that I OFTEN have trouble with "Home Sharing" that I can't seem to solve. The device seems to know my username and I think I have everything set up correctly on the other machine, but it just doesn't connect. Exacerbating this problem is that our HBO Now subscription is associated with my son Andy's Apple ID, not mine.

I have an old, spare laptop. I also have a really nice HTPC-form-factor Silverstone case with antique hardware in it.

I have the computer upstairs running ALL THE TIME anyway just in case either the iTunes sharing or the Squeezebox sharing decides to work that day. I might find it comforting to just move that whole operation to the living room.

That sort of limits my choices as Apple does not play friendly with that file format. My solution to this was I got an Zotac Zbox HTPC with windows on it and installed FooBar2000. it connects over the wired network to my Synology and will play all the music through the optical cable out to my pre/pro.

I also have all my video's and media tv shows (as I refuse to pay for cable). For that I run on the same computer a copy of Kodi (XBMC) that sends the video and sound out through the HDMI to my pre/pro.

The beauty of this option is that it is possible to stream the music to a different zone at the same time as watching something from Kodi. I have MediaMonkey on my iPad that does all the music streaming very well, and a remote app for kodi also on my ipad.

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I'm normal, it's the rest of the world that is crazy.

Does MediaMonkey on your iPad do anything with the NAS-stored content, or does it only airplay the content stored on the iPad?

I was looking at Kodi, although I might be more inclined to KodiBuntu for a variety of reasons. Do you enjoy the UI?

Do you like FooBar2000?

Quote:

The beauty of this option is that it is possible to stream the music to a different zone at the same time as watching something from Kodi.

I need more info on this. What receiver are you using? I ask because one stumbling block I've run into is that most receivers seem to only have one DAC path; in order to get content in Zone2, I have to supply an analog signal to my Onkyo 805. I know I've wallowed around in this question at other points, and I apologize if you've already advised me.

If you are referring to the net function on most new AVRs, Check them out. They've got any kind of music you can dream of, also from any part of the world and the quality is great.I'm hooked on the net only section at the moment "commercial free" just hours of what ever you chose.My AVR uses abetterradio.com.

MediaMonkey is the iPad app to control FooBar2000. Sadly foobar only comes in Windows. I have tried to run Foobar via Wine on a KodiBuntu machine but I have not worked out how to get it to launch as a background service and have Kodi running in the forground. After 2-3 weeks playing with it I gave up and went back to windows.

FooBar is sort of like JRiver except it is free and it seemed to work very well for me. So I stuck with it. Also, at the time JRiver had a fully function Windows, partial implementation on the Mac and NO working Linux version of itself. Recently that changed but I have not bothered looking again.

So foobar is the player of the music, or more to point, it reads the flac file and decodes it and output it through the optical port on the back of my Zbox HTPC. It has a great catalog function and with mediamonkey worked great to find the songs by song/artist/album/genre/file directory structure. it didn't need me to read anything to figure out how to work it. +WAF

If I was to re-invent what I have working now I would look to the linux play system that they are putting in the AxiomAir. it runs as a background service and should implement far better with Kodibuntu. Dont remember its name and can't be bothered right now to dig through that thread to re-find it. Or it might be part of the kickstart page.. don't remember.

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I'm normal, it's the rest of the world that is crazy.